


The Plato Connection

by WolfenM



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Blood, M/M, Panic Attack, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Romance, Platonic Soulmates, Post Reichenbach, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfenM/pseuds/WolfenM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John realises that, while he and Sherlock were not gay, he <i>was</i> in love with his friend. So what does that mean for him with Sherlock gone -- and what will happen when Sherlock returns?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Plato Connection

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING!! Contains SPOILERS for the entire BBC/Moffat/Gatiss Sherlock series through to the end of the BBC's Sherlock, Series 2.
> 
> Note: I have absolutely no issues with Sherlock/John slash -- I enjoy it, really! I just happen to like platonic love stories as well, and think it suits the Sherlock canon nicely. :)
> 
> Also note: I didn't come up with how Sherlock survived the scenario at the end of Series 2, so much as cobbled it together from a number of theories I've seen and found compelling in various comment sections around the web.
> 
> Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mrs Hudson, Mycroft Holmes, Greg Lestrade, Molly Hooper, and James Moriarty, as depicted in the BBC TV series Sherlock, as well as the few lines of dialogue between John and Jeanette, (c) The BBC / Stephen Moffat / Mark Gatiss. Special thanks to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for creating the original literary series.

Four months after Sherlock's death, John finally came to understand why it was that people had always been mistaking himself and Sherlock for a pair of lovers.

It was the first time since the fall that John had returned (at the prompting of his therapist) to a restaurant that John and Sherlock had frequented -- not the cafe next to 221, no, that was too much for today, but they'd come _here_ pretty often too. The understanding in question was prompted by a discussion between Rupert and Gemma, a pair of elderly regulars John knew in passing, who were seated at a nearby table. Rupert was agitatedly imploring Gemma to hand over his cigarettes, and she was calmly refusing. It was exactly like a conversation John had had with Sherlock on numerous occasions. John realised then that, to everyone else in the world, he and Sherlock had sounded like an old married couple -- not just about the cigarettes, but in their general interactions with one another.

But that wasn't the whole of the day's lesson.

As John half-listened, Rupert finally gave up his cajoling and excused himself to the restroom.

"I imagine your husband's intending to bum a cigarette off of someone in the loo," a waitress -- new, John noted absently -- remarked.

"Worse, he thinks he's got a few packs stashed away in there, but I managed to get someone to find and remove them all for me," Gemma revealed. "We're not married, though -- if we were, maybe I could use the threat of divorce to keep him in line!" she added with a chuckle. "I'm afraid I have the wrong set of parts for his tastes -- just as _he_ has the wrong set for _me_."

"Oh! I-I'm sorry for assuming ..." the waitress apologised.

John squelched the urge to do so as well -- he, too, had always assumed the couple to be married. Maybe if he'd paid as much attention as Sherlock, he would have noted before now the absence of a ring on the woman's left ring-finger. 

"It's quite all right, dear, a natural mistake," Gemma assured the waitress. "Especially since I highly doubt either of us will ever find someone we love more than we love one another!"

"Oh ... uh ...." The waitress was clearly as confused as John felt.

Gemma smiled sympathetically. "Are you familiar with the idea of platonic love?"

"Er ... I guess?" the waitress hedged. "It's like, the love between friends, yeah?"

Gemma shook her head. "Not really, but that too is an easy mistake to make, since the word 'platonic' is so often applied to incorrect circumstances."

"Oh? How so?" the waitress asked, settling into a chair. John expected the girl to get yelled at by her boss any second, but hoped she wouldn't, so he could hear Gemma's explanation himself.

"Well ... you would consider the love of friendship to be both less intense and less important than romantic love, yes? Your lover or spouse would come first in your life, before friends?" Gemma asked.

The waitress nodded non-committedly.

"Then simple friendship is not platonic. When Plato spoke of his ideal of love," Gemma continued, "he spoke of a love that _transcended_ sex, love that was based on the intelligence and virtue of the other person rather than their appearance, and which was ultimately directed as love towards the divine. Granted, Plato felt that the most divine love stemmed specifically from non-physical love between _men_ , but I think today it can be applied to anyone who feels love for another person based on a love of their soul rather than their body. Which is not to say that it's inspired either of us to become a priest or pious in some way," the woman added with a laugh. "Maybe we would disappoint Plato, because we still aim our love at one another -- or at one another's divinity, maybe -- rather than some higher being _outside_ of the pair of us. And also unlike Plato, I don't believe that physical enjoyment necessarily sullies love -- I believe the love of some married couples to be just as strong as what Rupert and I feel for one another, and that sex in their case is a manifestation of that love. The trick for Rupert and I, though, is to get other people to understand that what he and I feel for each other is just as strong as what a happily married, sexually active couple feel for one another -- especially considering the fact that when _we_ have sex, it's with other people instead of one another ...."

Gemma had started to get a vague, thoughtful look in her eyes as she spoke, but straightened now, as if out of a trance. "Oh, dear me, there I go again. Once a philosophy professor, always one, I suppose."

"No worries, marm," the waitress assured her. "You ain't never gonna 'ear me complain about learnin' somefin' new!" 

"Miss, could I have some more tea, please?" another customer called out just then, ending the conversation.

John barely noticed, though, as a moment from his past came back to haunt him just then ....

" _You know my friends are so wrong about you. You're a great boyfriend,_ " Jeanette, his girlfriend at the time had said.

" _Okay, that's good. I mean, I always thought I was great,_ " John had replied, missing her sarcasm.

" _And Sherlock Holmes is a_ very _lucky man,_ " she'd added, the sarcasm perfectly evident to him then.

Jeanette had, understandably, taken exception to John's dismissal of her under the pretext that he had to keep a suicide-watch on Sherlock. At the time -- and many other, similar times -- John had wondered if perhaps he was subconsciously using Sherlock as an excuse to avoid getting serious with anyone. In light of Gemma's little impromptu lecture, though, he considered another possibility: what if he really _had_ loved Sherlock more than any of those girls? What if he just hadn't been able to recognize the fact because society impressed upon everyone that, a) the person you would love most in your life was your significant other, therefore b) whatever else you did with your life, you couldn't truly be happy unless you _had_ a significant other, c) your significant other was someone whom you were both sexually attracted and somehow committed to, and d) it was wrong to have sex and/or a serious relationship with someone other than your significant other?

It wasn't so long ago, though, that the societal ideal had been to have a marriage specifically, and only to someone of the opposite sex. If times could soften societal norm from being married to just living together with conjugal benefits, with gender no longer being a factor, then maybe someday the idea of being in a committed relationship with someone _without_ having sex with them wouldn't seem strange at all ....

Not that it mattered anymore where John was concerned. Sherlock was gone, and in his place was a massive, gaping wound. John, who had been trained to both save and take lives, had never felt such a sense of purpose as he'd had when he'd been helping Sherlock, whether it was to do the menial tasks that left the man free to focus his massive intellect on helping others, or looking after Sherlock's health, or recording the life of the man for posterity, or acting as the man's moral compass. John had never felt such a sense of belonging, so _alive_ , as when he'd been at Sherlock's side, whether it was in a brawl, or running for their lives, or just quibbling in their apartment over something stupid. It could never be like that with anyone else -- no one could take one-in-a-million Sherlock's place, fill the equally unique gap the man had left. Now, for about half of John's day, _every_ day, John had no idea what to do with himself.

John had lost the love of his life without even realising it.

He saw it, heard it, all over again. Heard Sherlock telling him how Moriarty's claim was all true (it wasn't), that everything Sherlock had done was a lie (no, it wasn't -- John was sure then, and he was sure now). Saw Sherlock falling, endlessly -- until he wasn't anymore. There was a crowd blocking John's way, a wall made of the living, and why wouldn't they move, dammit, didn't they hear him pleading? How could they keep him from his best friend? It was an eon before John finally reached Sherlock, saw a mess of curly hair against a puddle of blood. So much blood, stark red against cream-coloured stone. That wasn't where blood was supposed to be -- pavement didn't bleed! Blood was _supposed_ to be hidden behind _skin_ , a pulsing river, but when he searched for it, Sherlock's pulse _wasn't_ there under, couldn't be contained by broken flesh! And then the strangers' arms were back, holding _John_ back, and how could they do that? How could they keep him from his best friend? Couldn't they hear him?

"--hear me? Dr Watson, can you hear me? Dear, I think you'd best call an ambulance," Gemma said to someone over John's shoulder.

"No, please, I'm all right," John rasped, trying to calm his breathing as his vision focused on the present day. The last thing he needed was to hear a siren, another reminder of _that day_ , while trying to calm a bout of PTSD stemming from the same scenario ....

"Maybe some chamomile tea, then?" came a more masculine voice -- Rupert's -- from just behind him. John realised that the man's hand was on his shoulder, probably having just stopped John from falling over. Rupert then sat in the chair beside John's, hand still steadying him, while Gemma sat to John's right.

"We were ever so sorry to hear about Mr Holmes," Gemma said gently, laying her fingers over John's. 

John choked on a bitter laugh. "Never mind that he was a fraud?"

Gemma and Rupert exchanged perplexed glances. "But surely you don't mean that, Dr Watson! You, of all people!"

It was John's turn to be befuddled. Everywhere he went, even now, months later, people spoke only derisively of Sherlock. The few times people had dared speak ill of the man to John's face -- and a few times less directly -- the speakers had been introduced to John's fist. John could count the number of people who said they still believed in Sherlock on one hand.

"No, no, of course not. Even when _he_ didn't believe that I believed, I still believed," John insisted. "It's just ...."

A sob threatened to interrupt his speech, so he opted for silence.

"Well, so do _we_ ," Gemma informed him confidently.

Even adding two more believers still left him able to tally them all on a single hand.

"It takes a helluva lot of paranoia to believe that _every single random person_ Mr Holmes ever read was someone he'd actually _paid_ ," Rupert added with a sniff. "Why, he's read some people here that we've known for years and still told us things we never knew about them ourselves, details you could never get from a newspaper or the internet! And I refuse to believe so many dear friends of ours would help someone else con us."

John found himself nodding. That was how he felt, exactly. It was how DI Greg Lestrade felt as well -- the man had said as much when John had confided to him Sherlock's dying words. John firmly believed Moriarty had threatened the life of someone, maybe several someones, that Sherlock had cared about and so had left the Sherlock with no choice but to play along. Greg had agreed, saying that Sherlock was no fraud, then had proposed that Sherlock could also have lied to John in their last conversation in order to deter John or anyone else from risking their lives to prove the truth. John felt that such a scenario was plausible, but also personally believed there was still more to it: that Holmes had wanted them all to hate him, rather than grieve, thinking that life would be easier for them if they embraced the roles of being his victims. Society would be kinder if they weren't painted as the willing supporters of Holmes.

Sherlock couldn't have understood how his attempt to malign himself might make his friends feel even worse; he clearly hadn't understood how much it had hurt when he had _accused_ John of believing Moriarty's lies. Now John was left wondering: hadn't he proven trustworthy enough? Faithful enough? John had seen Sherlock's pain and loneliness in that moment of rage at Riley's, when Sherlock thought John doubted him; John felt a failure then for not getting Sherlock to believe enough in _him_. Sherlock _shouldn't_ have felt so alone anymore, shouldn't have felt one iota of doubt towards John. And later, Sherlock shouldn't have thought for an instant that a plan involving getting John to believe and spread such a lie would _work_.

Despite John and Greg's loyalty, though, Sherlock's confession had gotten out. That final phone conversation had been recorded and released somehow -- arranged, no doubt, by Moriarty. John told reporters what he believed, but he was, despite his best efforts, painted as what Sherlock had wanted him to appear anyway -- a deluded victim of the twisted machinations of Sherlock Holmes.

The fact that Mycroft had unsuccessfully tortured Moriarty, giving the psychopath all he'd needed to know in order to ruin Sherlock's life and reputation in the process, was proof, in John's eyes, of Sherlock's innocence. A man who could withstand torture for weeks on end, presumably doing so just as part of an acting job, was entirely incongruous with the frightened "actor" John had met in Riley's apartment. If the man really had been an actor, and had been so terrified by just a _possible_ threat from Sherlock, he surely would have buckled when confronted with an _immediate_ one from Mycroft. But John didn't actually _need_ such proof, and no one else would believe it.

John wished he had killed Moriarty himself, there in that Riley woman's home. Every ounce of him had known the man was evil and a liar; in Afghanistan, John had killed men without really even knowing anything about them other than that they were the enemy. The only reason he hadn't ended Moriarty was because killing the man would have made Sherlock look all the more guilty in the eyes of everyone else, and likely land them both in prison.

It had never occurred to John that _not_ killing Moriarty would end Sherlock's life in a more mortal way than a ruined reputation or imprisonment could have.

A clock tolled.

"Oh, dear! I'm sorry, but Gemma, we need to go now, or we'll be late!" Rupert informed his companion.

"Will you be all right?" Gemma asked John.

"I will," John assured her. "I'm about to go meet a friend myself." The statement might or might not be true; he hadn't called Mrs Hudson in advance to let her know he was finally coming over to go through Sherlock's things (another suggestion from his therapist). Of course, thanks to his little episode, John was starting to wonder if going over there was such a good idea. Well, no, he wasn't wondering; he'd thought it was a bad idea from the get-go. He was just starting to think he should listen to himself instead of the therapist on this matter....

His mobile rang with the ringtone for Mrs Hudson. "Ah, that's her now," he told Rupert and Gemma. They nodded and waved goodbye as he answered.

Mrs Hudson sounded devastated. "Oh, John, dear, I'm so sorry to call on you like this, but I need help! The repairman is coming to fix my hot water heater, and I had to make an appointment in the first place, three days ago, but ... but I-I've just gotten a call about a dear friend in the hospital, and--"she choked.

"Say no more, Mrs Hudson," John told her, getting to his feet. "I can wait for the repair man for you. In fact, I'm right nearby -- see you in a minute."

He fought the drag of reluctance, a pull worse than gravity, for Mrs Hudson's sake, hurrying as best he could. He was so caught up in his steps, he missed seeing a runaway lorry that was barreling his way. Luckily, the lorry missed _him_ , too -- thanks to someone else who _hadn't_ missed him, knocking John out of the way just in time and causing them both to roll onto the pavement. 

"Are you all right?" John asked worriedly, recovering first and coming to kneel beside his rescuer.

His savior was a homeless fellow with a bushy beard; looking at him, so covered in scraggly hair, his akin and clothes both soiled, it was hard to tell the man's physical state. The hero sat up with a moan, his eyes screwed tightly closed.

"Do you need an ambulance?" John asked worriedly.

The man shook his head.

John knew a fair few of the homeless would rather avoid hospitals, for a long list of reasons. Maybe, if the fellow wasn't hurt too badly, John could treat him on his own .... 

"Can you walk? My, uh ... my flat's just a little ways up; you could rest there," John offered, relieved that it hadn't gutted him too badly to talk about his old place; his therapist would be pleased, he supposed.

The man nodded, and John helped him up, noting that the man limped as John lead him over to Mrs Hudson's building. She was already at the door when they arrived, and ushered them in.

"Heavens, what's happened?" she wondered, and John quickly explained.

She seemed reluctant to leave, then, but he assured her they would be all right. He knew she was as worried about leaving him alone with this stranger as she was about the poor man's injury, but it wasn't like he and Sherlock hadn't had countless strangers in their flat, after all; what was one more? He urged her to see her friend while she still could. That seemed to convince her -- he was glad, but he could have done without the look of pity in her eyes as she realised he was still missing his own friend. He was almost relieved when she left.

"Well, then -- it's just up the stairs," John said, leading the way, having to trust the bannister to help his guest make the climb. 

John held hard to the doorknob upon opening the door, leaning heavily against the wood. The room was all just as he'd left it, the last he'd seen it. It was, for just a moment, as though nothing had happened. He could pretend, just for one second, that nothing _had_.

"You all right?" his guest's gravelly voice asked.

"Oh, uh ... yes, sorry! Come in and have a seat," John told the man, not meeting the fellow's eyes as he shoved down bubbling irritation. It wasn't this stranger's fault that fellow had shattered the first peace John had felt in months. "Let me just put the kettle on for us, and then we can see about that leg."

Once the kettle was boiling, John stepped back into the living room and found his guest rummaging through things on the mantle. "Oy! What do you think you're doing??" John demanded, hurrying over.

"Aha!" the other man crowed, spinning around to face John, holding up a pack of cigarettes, familiar blue-green eyes shining in triumph. "I _knew_ I left a pack there!"

"Sher .. _Sherlock_ ...?" John breathed.

He'd never felt so metaphorically sucker-punched in all his life.

He didn't feel an ounce of regret after he _physically_ punched his formerly late best friend in the face.

Sherlock staggered, then straightened, nursing his jaw. "Hello to you, too, John," he said with a sparkle in his eye and a fond smile on his lips. "And here I thought you _wanted_ me not to be dead."

John remembered having spoken that very wish as he'd stood by Sherlock's tombstone. "You were _there_ , watching me?" It wasn't the first time Sherlock had infuriated him, nor the first time the man had made him deliriously happy, but it was the first time Sherlock has made him both _at the same time_ , two highly contradictory emotions that, until now, John wouldn't have believed possible to feel at once. Swearing colourfully, John stumbled into a chair, trying to process it all. "So why didn't you reveal yourself _then?_ " he finally croaked, tears stinging his eyes. "Wh ... why did you leave me _a-alone?_ "

Sherlock, stuffing the cigarettes into his pocket, sank into the chair opposite John, with the world-weariness of a much older fellow. "Truth be told, I wasn't even going to reveal myself _today_ , if not for that blasted lorry," he admitted.

" _Sherlock ..._ " John warned.

The no-longer-dead man sighed. "I thought you were better off without me, after all that happened. No, not even after -- how many relationships of yours have I ruined, John? You could have been happily married with a kid or two by now! For that matter, how many times have you nearly been _killed_ on those little ... _adventures_ of mine?" Sherlock asked bitterly.

John felt his anger soften, but it still lingered, didn't dispel entirely. "You mean those little adventures of _ours._ I _am_ a grown man, Sherlock! I _did_ make my own decisions!"

"You made them as a good friend," Sherlock countered. "You wouldn't have _had_ to make them if _I_ had been as good of one to you."

"Hey, now! That's my best friend you're talking about!" John chided, then sighed. "I guess you haven't been watching me all _that_ much, because if you _had_ , you'd see how miserable I've been since you .... Well, there's living and there's _living_ , and the way I figure it, nearly dying lets you know which you're doing. I wouldn't trade all the times we've helped people for even an extra _year_ of life apiece, much less a minute, and any girl who can't understand that isn't one for me anyway. Once you were gone, I was back to the way I was before we'd met -- _worse_ , even, because I better understood what was missing in my life this time. I try to help people still, but ... well, let's face it -- I'm not half the sleuth you are. Without you, I was ... I'm like a car without driver. And I'd been very content to _be_ the car, knowing that you couldn't get where you needed to be without me, and that I was helping you to get somewhere others needed you to be."

Sherlock regarded him silently a long moment. His lips tightened, but they apparently couldn't fully restrain the burst of laughter. Like a yawn, it was contagious, and soon John and Sherlock both were guffawing, tears streaming; some of the tears were of happiness at their reunion, though John knew neither of them would admit it.

"Well, if I was the driver, then I'd say you were the GPS, John," Sherlock finally replied once they'd managed to sober some. "You kept me on the right course. I was already too like Moriarty when you and I had met -- _you_ kept me from becoming his twin. You helped me to see the things that, for all of my powers of observation, I _couldn't_ , and helped me to connect to others in ways I'd never been able to before."

John knew that was true to some -- maybe even a great -- extent, but still .... "You could _never_ become like Moriarty, Sherlock -- there's goodness in you where there is _none_ in him. There has to be," he insisted when Sherlock shook his head. "I _couldn't_ have helped you if you hadn't have good in you to start with."

Sherlock being a sociopath, as the man himself insisted, only suggested that the part of the brain that dealt with empathy was underdeveloped -- it didn't necessarily mean that it wasn't there at _all_ , or couldn't _be_ developed the way other parts of the brain could. And the very fact that Sherlock was glad John had kept him from being like Moriarty suggested that Sherlock never _would_ be like that man, even without John's help.

"Maybe so," Sherlock agreed. "Still, you being there makes being human a lot _easier_." A fleeting look of apology crossed Sherlock's face, followed by a faint sadness as he focused in the floor. "That is ... it _made_ it easier."

"Now hold on," John protested. "You don't think you can come back into my life and then just disappear again, do you?" He stood up, fists clenched. "I won't let you!"

Sherlock looked both hopeful and wary at once. "John ... Moriarty is still out there. I did all this to keep you _safe_ from him, but he still has to be found and stopped."

John shook his head. "You did all this to keep me _alive_ \-- and yet I _haven't_ been. I've been more of a ghost than a person. They might as well have buried me next to--who the hell is in your grave, anyway? And how did you survive the fall? You were _dead!_ I _saw_ \--"

"What I _told_ you to see," Sherlock assured him.

The kettle went off just then. John got their tea, and took a look at his friend's leg and other injuries. While it wasn't their first physical contact since Sherlock's "death", it _was_ the first since John knew it was actually Sherlock, and so, while John already knew it was no ghost before him, he found himself glad for the excuse to reaffirm that fact. And, well ... John might not lust after Sherlock, but that didn't mean there wasn't a certain enjoyment to be had from contact with him, warm and solid. Human communication was as much about touch as speech, and John had been starved of all kinds of communication from his best friend.

As John tended him, Sherlock launched into the story of his greatest subterfuge ever. The story turned out to involve a great deal of assistance from Mycroft, as well as some from Molly Hooper. Sherlock had chosen that site, the hospital rooftop, for meeting Moriarty because it afforded Sherlock the easiest means to fake his own death. Sherlock had faked the message about Mrs Hudson to give himself time to get everything in place -- including a cyclist that would both dose John with the drug from Baskerville, procured by Mycroft, and disorient John enough to convince him that, though his view had been interrupted, the fall was complete, Sherlock's pulse non-existent. What really happened was that Sherlock fell into a lorry parked in front of the building (an arrangement facilitated by Mycroft), grabbed some blood bags left in it by Molly, and hurriedly bloodied himself and the ground up before laying down. Everyone else at the scene -- gawkers and the eventual paramedics -- had been agents, people who know how to keep secrets, sent by Mycroft, to fool both Moriarty and John. Molly had then faked her paperwork, assuring the world that Sherlock had indeed died.

John fought down the jealousy that Mycroft (traitor!) and Molly were allowed to know Sherlock's fate when John himself was not, and focused on Sherlock's story. "If you saw Moriarty shot himself in the head, then why do you think he's still alive?" He didn't need to ask why Sherlock was in hiding; even if Sherlock _hadn't_ thought that Moriarty was still alive, the police still believed Sherlock had kidnapped children, as well as terrorised and conned countless people.

"Because no body was found on the rooftop, just a puddle of fake blood," Sherlock explained. "I admit I fell for it, but it's obvious now that he used a fake gun, one whose trigger was probably a remote detonator for a few blood capsules he must have had hidden in his hair."

"So he fooled you with his supposed death, the same as you did with him -- and with me." John tried to keep the edge out of his voice but failed.

"John, I am truly and deeply sorry for putting you through all that," Sherlock professed earnestly, sounding pained. "Believe it or not, It broke my heart, watching you grieve, knowing the nightmares I must have left you with. But fooling you was the key to making it all believable. Even with you refusing to believe that I was a fake, no one could doubt that you believed me _dead_. And with me gone, Moriarty had no reason to come after you, or Mrs Hudson, or Lestrade -- your deaths would only have looked suspicious then, plant a seed of doubt that would have grown in the opposite direction. Most of all, I believed you had the strength to get past that moment, just as you did the horrors war left you with, and get on with your life."

It was hard for John to stay hurt, knowing that two other lives had likewise been at stake. John wasn't a great liar, so being fooled into believing Sherlock's death was indeed better than relying on John's non-existent acting skills. Still .... "For such a logical man, you really do miss the obvious sometimes," he chuckled mirthlessly, shaking his head. At Sherlock's confused look, John explained, "I got past the _war_ because of _you_ , idiot! Who was supposed to help me get me past the loss of _you?_ "

It was a rare sight: a speechless Sherlock.

"Well, it's a moot point now, 'ey?" John continued, laughing weakly, suddenly feeling awkward. "Do you think he's still watching us?" asked, looking around the room, desperate to change the subject.

Recovering, Sherlock shook his head. "I've had my own surveillance in place -- no one's been in here besides Mrs Hudson, and no one we don't know has been in her flat. No one's been tailing you. It's been long enough since the fall, and you were so convincing, he has no reason to fear me anymore. With me dead and my reputation ruined, I'm a closed chapter for him. He'll be looking for _another_ me to challenge himself against -- and be running his criminal empire in the meantime, as he always has." 

It occurred to John then that, although Sherlock had been able to see John since the fall, Sherlock had also suffered all this time, being unable to interact with John. But Sherlock wouldn't have to do that anymore -- just like John was no longer in mourning (though he supposed he would still need to _pretend_ he was).

"So ... what do we do now?" John wondered.

"Take a shower," Sherlock said, getting to his feet.

John honestly didn't know what to say to that, other than, "Uh ... The shower's busted, actually."

Sherlock snorted in amusement, apparently thinking John was just saying that in order to avoid a more awkward conversation about sexual orientations. "Don't worry; I meant _me_ , not both of us."

"I knew that," John hedged, wondering, thanks to Gemma's lecture, just how _exactly_ Sherlock felt about him. "The shower _is_ busted, though. That's actually part of why I'm here -- I'm supposed to wait for the water-heater repairman for Mrs Hudson."

Sherlock smacked his forehead, moaning in dismay.

"Where have you been living, anyway?" John asked. "With Mycroft?"

"Not if my life depended on it," Sherlock growled. John understood that to mean that Sherlock had only sought Mycroft's help against Moriarty in order to save the ones he cared for, not for his own sake.

John looked around. "Have you been here, then?" Perhaps Mrs Hudson was in on all this as well, and had really asked John over as a means to get him and Sherlock to meet again?

"No, no, the fewer who know I didn't die, the better. I've been with the Homeless Network."

John blinked, nonplussed. "Yes, because having tens, even _hundreds_ , of _children_ who know you're still alive is _so_ much better than having one or two adults."

"No one _sees_ those children, much less hears them -- it's why they're so effective as spies," Sherlock reminded him.

"Point taken," John agreed, looking down at the floor, trying not to feel yet more jealousy towards those that had already known that Sherlock was still alive.

The next thing he knew, Sherlock was pulling him into a crushing hug. "I've missed you so much," Sherlock told him, voice broken.

Once John was over the shock of that confession, he wrapped his arms around his best mate, returning the pressure pound for pound, again enjoying the tangible evidence that Sherlock was here with him instead of in the cold ground. "I've missed you too," he assured Sherlock, his own voice cracking.

The doorbell rang, startling them both. John was embarrassed to find he needed to wipe his eyes dry -- or he was until he discovered that Sherlock was doing the same.

"I, ah, better get that," John said, gesturing reluctantly to the door.

"Of--" Sherlock cleared his throat. "Of course. I'll be here when you get back," he promised.

John nodded, smiling. As he turned to go to the door, Sherlock grabbed his hand.

"I mean it."

John nodded again, smile brightening. "I believe you," he assured Sherlock with a squeeze of his fingers, and was rewarded by the smile he'd long missed.

As John hurried down the stairs to the front door, his heart and step were both infinitely lighter than they had been going up. He was once more struck by a sense of normalcy as he reached for the knob -- only this time, it wasn't a painful memory of something he could never have again.

Now, it was a wish that had a chance to come true.

~FINIS~

**Author's Note:**

> If you've enjoyed my writing, I invite you to explore my original fantasy storyverse, [Gaiankind](http://gaiankind.com)! You can even find Gaiankind stories for free [here](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Gaiankind) on AO3!


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